In this myth-busting episode, Larissa Soehn, CEO of Next Page Publishing, shares how she guides her clients to write their own books to show off their expertise in their field thus helping their business grow.
You will discover:
– Whether or not you should write a book
– What the key to success is for aspiring authors – and why so many entrepreneurs already have it
– The truth about the many myths that surround book publishing
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach and I am here with yet another high demand coach, a book coach, in fact, and that is Larissa Soehn. She’s an international best selling author, and she’s the CEO of next page publishing. Next page publishing is proud to serve and support coaches as they look for ways to boost their businesses and become leaders in their industries. Now, as the company’s founder Louis’s mission is to help aspiring authors unleash the power of their book on the world and use it to grow their businesses. She specifically helps women entrepreneurs who are struggling to make their business stand out from the crowd, and feel like they’re missing out on making the right connections with their ideal clients. Well, well, the rest is a fascinating concept. You know, I love the idea of book publishing, I specifically love the idea of like, what’s the strategy behind why you would publish a book, which I’m excited to dive into with you. But before we get there, I’d love to just kind of hit rewind a little bit. Tell us your story. What were you doing before becoming a book coach? And how did that ultimately lead you to make the leap?
Larissa Soehn
Thank you, first of all, for having me here. Here. I am very excited to talk about this topic. Because I think the more people that hear about the story behind it, and the power in a book, the more people that are going to find the courage to do that thing that they’ve always wanted to do. And for a lot of people writing a book is the dream. And I was one of those people. In 2021, I left my corporate position, I was a corporate employee working for the man, you know, corporate America, and I was drowning in bureaucracy. And I think that that story is so similar for a lot of people, especially the ones that become coaches, because we know that there’s a better way we know how it can suck the life out of you. And we know that other people can learn from our lessons before they go through the hardships that we have gone through. So I left my corporate position in 2021. And I started writing creatively. And I stepped into my first sci fi book, and I published my first sci fi book within about six months of starting writing it. And it was like this switch had been flipped in my body in my soul in my mind, and I knew that publishing was going to be the industry that I needed to step in. But I didn’t know what capacity yet. I didn’t know if I was going to become a full time writer, I didn’t know if I was going to become a writing coach. If I was going to become an editor, I just knew that I needed to be in the industry. And so I started digging around, I wrote a couple more books, I dabbled in nonfiction, I dabbled in fiction, and I found this niche through trial and error. And learning what not to do. When I published my first book I published with what I now know, is a vanity press. And they taught me all the ways that they’re out. These companies are out there to take advantage of authors, especially new authors who don’t know any better and are just looking for someone to help them bring this dream to reality. And so I stepped back and said, Okay, how can I? How can I make this the best world for me as a coach, as an author, as an editor, and for the the author’s themselves, and I found this really cool niche in entrepreneurs, they were the the most motivated with the best background stories as to why they were doing what they were doing. And that is the key to success in a good book, you have to want it and you have to have the story and the motivation to back it up. And so I created next page publishing, and I have been publishing, helping other people publish their books for over a year now.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Fantastic, fantastic. So you’ve been doing this for a little bit, some exciting results coming out of it, I the first question that I have for you is, I want to kind of take a big step back and say, who should write a book and why?
Larissa Soehn
I know that you were you actually you mentioned this before we started recording the myth busting thing. Not everyone should write a book. That’s one of the myths that a lot of people feel like everyone should write about. I think everybody has a book in them. In some capacity, they just have to find the right angle for the but not everyone should write a book, you shouldn’t write a book, if you hate writing, there are plenty of people out there that are amazing speaking, and they’re amazing on stages, and they have no business writing a book. And that’s they just don’t enjoy it. And why would you do something you don’t enjoy, to fold because you it’s going to be a slog, and you’re going to hate it at the end, and you’re never gonna want to do it again. And your readers are going to know that you hated it. Whether you know it or not, the energy that you bring to your book shows up in your words, and it shows up in your tone and your readers pick up on that. So who should write a book? It’s the people that are motivated to share their stories with a different kind of audience outside of social media outside of videos, and they want to connect on a deeper level. Another really good reason to write a book is because we are looking for that reflection in ourselves. And I just had a conversation with someone he was asking me like Do you think my story is good enough to write a book? And I said, Well, do you think your story is good enough to write a book? And he’s like, I don’t know, I said, that’s a reason to write a book, right there because he needed the reflection. Even if he never published it, he needed that moment of reflection to find out for himself. Just how amazing Historie is that inspiration that comes from true honest, written reflection of what you’ve been through? And where you’re going?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, oh, that’s so good. So let’s say we kind of we get the bug, we want to write the book, what would you say are some of the biggest challenges specifically for female entrepreneurs who who want to write who want to publish a book?
Larissa Soehn
Confidence, and people pleasing? It’s that it’s that good girl syndrome that comes across in so many of us. And it’s that courage to step outside of what people think we should be doing and doing something that we need to be doing? It’s that feeling of it. For some people, it’s pushing your mom’s voice out of your head, women have a hard time getting mom out of their head, and that when their mom thinks that’s a crazy idea, we agree, we tend to agree like, all right, I could never do that. Right? Mom, my story is not interesting, or the spouse that things No, I don’t want you to take that much time away from the family. Even though, you know, we as women know, this is what we need to be doing. It’s getting, finding the confidence in yourself to believe that this is the right step for you and to believe that you are capable of doing it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And you know, we could obviously spend a lot of time on this, but just a couple on dreaming of Hacks is the right word. But how do you start down that road of building the confidence that you need?
Larissa Soehn
I have this thing and I really wish I could find who said it because I’m not the creator of it. A problem shared is a problem halved. And or our worry shared is a worry halved. And what it comes down to is if you can name what your fear is, and it’s not you don’t have time, it’s not you don’t have money. It’s not you don’t have skill, drop those three. Those are excuses. Those are something masking something deeper, and quite often it’s imposter syndrome. I’m scared. I I’m worried what people are going to say I’m worried no one’s going to like it. Those are the true underlying fears. Find someone, a coach, a partner, a friend, a colleague that you can talk to about that fear. And suddenly that power it holds over you is cut in half, because you’ll say it all out, and you’ll go and if you find the right person, they’ll tell you you’re being ridiculous. And you’ll hear it in your own voice. When you say it, you’ll go well, I can think of 10 reasons that’s not true. Yeah, right. And so a problem shared is a problem halved?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so good. All right. So let’s do this. And again, like you mentioned, I talked about this on the kind of pre recording, and I think it’d be a lot of fun. Now, I want to do a little bit of factor fiction, right, we’ll take kind of a Mythbusters approach to this. Because, you know, there’s lots of things that I think we’ve all heard about books, and I’d love for you to just kind of set the record straight. So first one here, I’ve heard that most books, books don’t sell more than 1000 copies. So first, is that true? And then if it is, what can aspiring authors do to blow that out of the water, or should they?
Larissa Soehn
It’s fiction, but not in the way you hope. Most books don’t sell more than 100 copies. Well, so that is a staggering result. Now, things that you can do to get above that staggeringly low average, understand marketing, a lot of time and this is why I work with entrepreneurs, because they know the importance of marketing. But if you are writing a fiction book, and you don’t have a business and you’ve never touched marketing, understand that writing is actually the easy part. It’s the marketing, that is the lifetime of your book, and if you do not have a marketing plan, and if you do not have a marketing partner, if you can, you know, create one in your in your circle of trust, then your book will not you will not sell beyond family and friends, you will not get that reach that she wants. You need to understand marketing. And my biggest biggest marketing tip is understand who you’re talking to. And you can do that by asking yourself a couple of questions. One, what does my book do for people to who was struggling with that problem? And three, where are they hanging out? If you can answer those three questions about your book, or your coach, coaching program, whatever the case might be, you will soar above that average.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. And so similar to that, and you’ve even said this, but I want to go directly after it until you kind of probably rephrase a lot of what you said here, but writing the book is the hard part. Right? It’s getting it out there and so well in terms have just kind of expectation setting how much of the work is the actual writing versus what happens once it’s already been written.
Larissa Soehn
I’m gonna speak specifically to my authors, because we have an escalated writing cycle. It’s accelerated, I would say. But generally speaking, there are three rounds of writing and editing, I’m going to lump them together, it’s the time that you spend really heavily in your manuscript, the first draft is exactly like it sounds, it’s the first draft, it is just getting the ideas out of your head and onto paper. And when people do this alone, they end their first draft, and it is rough, and it’s supposed to be rough, don’t expect it to be anything else. If you’re doing this on yourself, don’t put that pressure on yourself, and it needs to be perfect the first time. But it’s all about getting it out of your head and creating the draft that you can start coming back to it’s called the shitty first draft. And it’s supposed to be now in my coaching programs, the way we work on the shitty first draft is we do it with coaching. So you’re partnered with a coach, and they’re helping you every week, you’re reading with them, and you’re, and you’re getting feedback on your writing. And this is this, we do this for two reasons. One, it keeps the momentum high, you have accountability, you’re moving forward, you’re delivering roughly a chapter a week. And two, you’re not making the same mistakes that you would make throughout the entire manuscript, your coach is going to come in and say, Hey, this is amazing, keep doing this, I need more of this, or you know, this isn’t working, we need to step back in and come at it from a different angle. So by the time in my coaching programs, by the time they’re done the first draft, it’s technically done the second draft, because you’ve received all this feedback along the way that you cut out that, you know, six month block at the end of the first draft that an author would take for secondary, it also effectively acts as beta readers. Now, if you’re doing this alone, at the end of your second draft, you’re going to go out, hopefully, for beta readers, you’re going to go to somebody that’s in your niche certain in your industry, or someone you trust for feedback, and they’re going to give you feedback, well, that’s third or third draft, by the end of the third draft, you should be ready for professional editing. And I could talk about professional editing for a full nother episode. So I won’t, but you do need at some some level, you should plan to have a professional editor look at your work.
Scott Ritzheimer
And it’s really, really helpful. Because I think, you know, for some people, it can just be so overwhelming to think about that. But just a nice simple step there and what to do with each one. I think it’s fantastic. Now, once the book is written, edited, ready to go, what’s the, what’s the process look like from there?
Larissa Soehn
So after you’re done editing, there’s four pillars to publishing. And I like to layer it is kind of like an old timey architectural Greek statue kind of a thing, a monument, if you will, the base level is marketing. And that’s very intentional, because if you like I said earlier, if you don’t have a marketing plan, you will not feel successful in your book, especially for my entrepreneurs who are looking to make money off of their books, you need to have the baseline of marketing. And then you have three pillars on top of that writing, editing, and publishing. Now within the publishing platform is the publishing pillar is going to come that design work and, and finding the right platform and publishing platform for you. I highly recommend you invest in a designer that knows your niche that is going to be able to give you guidance and and build in your brand. Again, this comes back to my entrepreneurs, this is a pivotal funnel in your brand. So it needs to match your brand, it needs to be a representation of you your message and your in your company. So finding a designer that’s going to do that for you. But it does all come back down to the marketing, you could have the most beautiful cover the best message and the world’s most unique take on your whatever your topic is. If you don’t market it, it will go nowhere. And you’ll feel sad.
Scott Ritzheimer
And so let’s say we’ve written a great book, and now it’s time to get it out there. So going back to our factor of fiction, the publisher does all of that for you. So once you’ve written a book, what should your expectations be? How the publisher is going to get it out there and what you need to do to get it out there?
Larissa Soehn
So it depends on what your goals are for the book. Now, if you are partnering with a hybrid publisher, like myself, and next page publishing, and you, you have to be really clear with me and we have to have open dialogue on what are your goals for the book if your goals are to simply sell copies to potential clients. Then we’re going to set you up preferably on Amazon with an e book. If your goal is you want to give away signed copies at speaking events. We’re going to set you up with a paperback where you can bulk order copy is that you can sign and then you can sell them that way. If you want to be in bookstores, that’s a whole nother publishing platform that we have to start looking at. And so you, you have to be really clear on what your goals are. If you just want to use your book as a funnel, and you want to put it up for free on your website, tirely different process. So you need to know going in, what is the long term goals of your book? And how do you plan to use them in your business?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. And one more factor fiction here. And then I got a couple of questions I want to kind of dig in around this. But do the next one is, do you like you have to have a big audience before you can publish a book? Is that true or false?
Larissa Soehn
That is very false, very, very false. And the reason that happens, so a lot of people come in to the coaching world thinking I can’t be successful on a small audience. And we’ve seen it time and time again. And I’m hoping you’ve had people on your podcasts that have talked about the power of small Facebook groups, small and engaged Facebook groups, how many clients you can take out of love. And the same goes for your book, the problem with people that have a really big audience going in, especially people that don’t have a business, chances of that audience being for right audience are is very, very slick, because they’re, they’re not didn’t sign up for your book, they didn’t sign up for this type of content. They’re here for a different reason. And so those people that have the big list have this false sense of confidence that they’re going to be able to write a best seller, they’re gonna sell 1000s and 1000s of copies. And they don’t put in the work, they don’t create the marketing plan, they don’t have the backup systems, the plan in place, and then their book flops. Whereas the people with a smaller list, we know straight up is going to be we’re gonna have to work for this. And so we make the time we put the plans and we find the resources, and we we do the work to make it happen.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so good. That’s so good. So, I mean, in the context of all of this, and in the work you you’re doing with your clients, what would you say is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all. So for everyone listening today was that one thing you really wish they knew?
Larissa Soehn
I was just thinking about this, and it’s coming on the tail end of my walk. So it is like super timely. It can be both. And I wish this is not a secret, I guess. But it’s one thing my Sara therapist says to you can both be afraid and excited. You can both be worried and has hope. It’s okay to feel both. And when you come into your book, expecting it to only be full of excitement and hope is not realistic. It is a big endeavor to go on. It’s a big commitment to yourself to your business to your future goals. If you weren’t a little bit worried, I would be concerned. Because it’s the worry that makes you do the work and put in the action to actually make it happen. If we lived on hope alone, we’d probably never do anything because we would just hope it happened. But if we worry about it, and we make plans, and we take action, it’s different. So as my therapist says it can be both.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so good. That’s so good. The funniest thing is just a lesson I learned from my my middle son, when he was like three years old. We’d asked like, how are you doing? And you’d be like, well, like this much angry and this much happy. You know, it wasn’t one or the other. It’s completely blew my mind. But you’re so right it. And I found that most of the time, what we’re really feeling what we’re really experiencing the truth of this situation is that it is both. There’s elements of it. And when we ignore one or the other, we lose the value that can come from it. So it’s fantastic, fantastic wisdom in that. So I’m going to shift gears a little bit on you and have you take off your coach hat for a moment. Put on your own CEO how to fuel talk to us, what’s the next stage of growth look like for you and your business and what challenge we have to overcome to get there?
Larissa Soehn
Growth is such an interesting thing in your business because it looks so different for everyone else. I used to think I wanted to be a millionaire. In my business, I used my motto used to be I’ll be the face voice and founder of a million dollar company. And I’ve been really, you know, we’ve been wrapping up the number of clients we’re bringing in, and I’ve been handling a lot of the sales calls myself. And I realized that if I don’t have that connection with my clients that are going through my programs, I think I’d be really sad. I think I would feel like I’m not connected to the company anymore that I worked so hard to create. And so I’m in process right now of shifting, what does staying involved look like and scaling up? Because a lot of times we scale up and then we kind of remove ourselves from the picture. No longer are we dealing with the clients with the finances with the marketing and we were pulled up and we’re sort of sitting on a pedestal above it all. And I think I would really We miss the weeds, and being in the weeds with my clients and reading their work, and giving them the glowing feedback that they so desperately need in times of uncertainty. And I think I would miss that. So I’m not sure what the future looks like for my business. I’m in transition of just understanding what my goals are long term.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. Oh, there’s so much. There’s so much in that I really appreciate you sharing because it’s true, I believe it was Wendy Barlow, and she was a guest on the episode. And one of the things he was like, you don’t need a million dollar business, like where are we getting this idea that a million dollar business is a thing she’s like, I did that and I would never been sicker, more burnout and more frustrated with my life than I did when I hit that, that arbitrary number. So yeah, and then I love the second aspect of that is going right back to your earlier point of it can be but how do you do that? How do you get both the hands on getting down in there enjoying the work that you actually do? And then also building up a company that can do that at scale? I love it. So folks out there, they’ve got a book burning inside of them. They need someone to help show them the way how can they find more out about you the work you do and get connected?
Larissa Soehn
Yeah, I would definitely head to nextpagepublishing.net You’ll be able to find out all about our free resources. There are a ton of free resources out there we do a monthly live masterclass session where you can come in and have chats with me and learn more about the publishing industry, what the what it means to become a best selling author and, and the five steps to get you there. We’ve got blogs, we’ve got our own podcast. So definitely head to next page publishing dotnet. And if you’re looking to book a call, it’s right on the front page. You can book a call and like I said, I’m doing most of the sales calls myself because that’s the energy is the energy is there for me. So you’ll you’ll probably meet with me directly.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s awesome. So check it out nextpagepublishing.net. Larissa, thank you so much for being on just an honor and privilege having you here. And for those of you who are listening and watching today, you know your time and attention means the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Larissa Soehn
Larissa Soehn is an international bestselling author and the CEO of Next Page Publishing. Next Page Publishing is proud to serve and support coaches as they look for ways to boost their businesses and become leaders in their industries. As the company’s founder, Larissa’s mission is to help aspiring authors unleash the power of their book on the world and use it to grow their businesses. She helps women entrepreneurs who are struggling to make their business stand out from the crowd and feel like they are missing out on making connections with their ideal clients.
Want to learn more about Larissa Soehn’s work at Next Page Publishing? Check out her website at https://www.nextpagepublishing.net
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